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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26109892">I kept walking, except for when I ran</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/trykynyx/pseuds/trykynyx'>trykynyx</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Diviners Series - Libba Bray</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Great Depression, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Canon, Spoilers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:43:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,782</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26109892</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/trykynyx/pseuds/trykynyx</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Gloria Cowan, by all accounts, should be dead right now. Her comrades were either dead or deported, and yet there she was, standing on the front stoop of a Harlem apartment building. </p><p>Even as the country seemed to crumble to ruin, she seemed to watch it from a distance, like it was a picture show playing on a screen across a canyon. She was a relic of another time, a veteran of a war that had spat her out, leaving her a defeated enemy, a traitor to the cause, a hapless victim. Depended who you asked.  </p><p>But she had a boat to catch and some loose ends to tie up before she went.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>I kept walking, except for when I ran</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Did I choose a minor character to imprint on? Yes, yes I did. </p><p>Just to set the scene a bit - this is set in 1932, five years after the end of The King of Crows. This puts Isaiah at roughly 16 and Gloria anywhere between her early- to late-twenties. As we don't know anything really about the sixth member of the Secret Six, besides the fact that they were deported, I elected to make her an Italian immigrant.</p><p>The fic title is a tweaked line from "Door at the End of the Hall" by Penelope Schott, and the chapter title is from "The Bridge" by Melissa Kwasny.</p><p>Spoilers for: Before the Devil Breaks You and The King of Crows</p><p>content/trigger warnings for: suicide mention, suicidal ideation, electrocution, death, guns, smoking</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gloria Cowan, by all accounts, should be dead right now. Her comrades were either dead or deported, and yet there she was, standing on the front stoop of a Harlem apartment building. </p><p>Even as the country seemed to crumble to ruin, she seemed to watch it from a distance, like it was a picture show playing on a screen across a canyon. She was a relic of another time, a veteran of a war that had spat her out, leaving her a defeated enemy, a traitor to the cause, a hapless victim. Depended who you asked.  </p><p>But she had a boat to catch and some loose ends to tie up before she went. Gloria had left too many things unsaid already- she wasn’t going anywhere without saying her piece now. She just had to make it the last bit of the way, if only she could make herself open the door and step over the threshold. </p><p>
  <em> Damn it all, am I really such a coward? </em>
</p><p>“You lost, miss?” </p><p>Gloria starts at the voice just behind her and whirls around to see a gangly Black boy standing halfway up the concrete steps. Paul Brown would have laughed her out of town, letting a teenager get the jump on her. She can see his wolfish grin, so different from Arthur’s, even after all these years.</p><p>“Ah- no, just, well. Working up my nerve I suppose.” She thinks about how that might sound, a white woman in Harlem scared to walk into an apartment, and tries to backpedal. “I mean, that is to say, I’m here to see-” </p><p>The boy holds up a hand to Gloria’s stammering, and she stops.</p><p>“Evie,” he finishes calmly. “You’re here to see Evie O’Neill.”</p><p>On the other side of the canyon, Gloria may have been shocked. On this side of the canyon, Gloria nods, taking it in stride.</p><p>“You know her?”</p><p>
  <em> I am an ex-revolutionary looking for a has-been radio medium. What a joke. </em>
</p><p>The boy finishes climbing the stairs, so he is standing with her at the top. He is almost as tall as she is, but the way his Sunday best seems too tight at the shoulders and too high at the ankles makes her think he isn’t done growing by a long shot. Then again, there’s not much money for clothes these days.</p><p>“Yeah, I know her alright. She ain’t home though.” </p><p>Gloria searches the boy’s face to see if he’s lying. She’s no Diviner, but knowing who was trying to yank her chain has always been one of her gifts. </p><p>
  <em> It only failed me once. It only cost me everything. </em>
</p><p>She can see that the boy is telling her the truth, and nods. His eyes get a faraway look for a moment and when it passes he looks up at the bright sky.</p><p>“Wanna come inside and wait out the rain?” </p><p>It isn’t raining, and Gloria is about to say so, when she feels a drop hit her hand. She looks back at the boy, who is already holding the door to the main stairwell open. </p><p>“I’m Isaiah, by the way,” he says with a grin.</p><p> </p><p>----</p><p> </p><p>The apartment is messy, and based on the two cots in the sitting room, filled to capacity- but it is also homey. There are two pairs of tap shoes near the door that had seen better days, and a radio on the mantelpiece of the fireplace. Lipstick-covered cigarette butts are almost overflowing from an ashtray on a coffee table next to the piano by the window. </p><p>Isaiah leaves her perched awkwardly on a sofa, slides a bible she hadn’t noticed him carrying into its place on a bookshelf in the hall, and disappeared into the kitchen.</p><p>“Would you like some milk?” </p><p>Gloria can tell by the tone of Isaiah’s voice that he wants her to say no, so she does. It makes sense, milk is hard to come by these days, and harder to afford.</p><p>“Water is fine, thank you.” </p><p>She looks at a worn pair of crutches leaning haphazardly against a coat rack piled high with men and women’s outerwear and topped with a fisherman’s cap hanging at a jaunty angle. Gloria thinks about her room in the silent hotel downtown, where the bellhop had given her a tired once-over when he’d delivered her to a room on the 14th floor. She had almost told him that if she was going to jump out a window, she would have done it the day Aron Minsky was strapped into an electric chair. </p><p>Isaiah comes back into the front room with two tall glasses of water, passes one to her, and walks to the window. He shifts his weight, looks at her and then out to the street, then clears his throat. She realizes that he is nervous, and wonders if it is because she is a stranger or a strange woman. </p><p>
  <em> I am not as young as I used to be, but I’m certainly not so old yet either. </em>
</p><p>“My mother used to say that the Devil was beating his wife, when it rains like this,” Isaiah says finally, gesturing outside. The rain was steady but the afternoon had not darkened too much. Gloria may not be what she once was, but she's never missed an opportunity to sneer at the opiate of the masses. </p><p>“Seems silly, for a real Diviner to believe in fantasies written down in old books by old men,” she all but snaps. She takes a sip of water, and tries to calm herself. Try not to be a barracuda, isn’t that what Arthur had always said? </p><p>Aron used to roll his eyes at the jab, and Filomena would curl her lips back into a horrible toothy grimace that had them all giggling like children. It used to drive Paul crazy, though he couldn’t hide the fondness in his voice when he would chide them. Before Filomena had been deported and Paul had been arrested, back when the Secret Six meant something, the three of them had called themselves Team Barracuda. They mostly did it to tease Arthur, who managed to be too serious and yet not serious enough as far as they were concerned. </p><p>Isaiah does not seem mortally offended, but he’s set his shoulders in a way that is less relaxed than it was a moment ago. Luis would have given her a look with his big brown eyes, and said something about how alienating people did nothing for the cause and everything for her pride.</p><p>“Some stories are real in different ways. I know the way things can be true and not-true, 'specially coz I’m a Diviner,” he tells her, looking her square in the eye. Gloria holds his gaze for a moment, then sighs. </p><p>
  <em> Hold it together. You’re not here to debate theology.  </em>
</p><p>“Do you know who I am?” she asks. Isaiah shakes his head, and an orange cat makes its way nonchalantly into the room. The way his face lights up at the sight of it makes him look very young- more like the boy in those wanted posters.</p><p>Gloria isn’t surprised he doesn’t know her. Her father had worked very hard to keep her face and name out of the papers and newsreels as much as that was possible. She wonders what it is he can see. </p><p>“I can see that you want to talk to Evie,” he says, smiling a little. He grows serious again. “I know that you will talk to her.”</p><p>Gloria nods, and looks at the petticoat of ash on the coffee table by the window. She desperately wants a cigarette. Her father had expressly forbidden her from smoking, and the vice had curled in her belly like a viper. A petty desire to yellow her nails and teeth, to foul her breath and hair, when she was meant to be some pretty clothes horse in the corner.</p><p>She remembers the feeling of her father's disdainful gaze following her even when he wasn’t there. That look in his eye, the curl of his lip, the dismissive wave of his hand - each had been a lash of shame across her heart, a stone slipped into her pockets as she sank deeper and deeper into the sea of her guilt.</p><p>Gloria still has to remind herself that her father is dead, and has been for months now. It seems impossible - he’d always seemed no more capable of death than marble. But when he’d heard that everything he’d been so proud of, their wealth, their status, had crumbled out from under him like it was so much ash and dust, her father had crumbled too. He retreated to his study, put a pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger.</p><p>
  <em>I don’t have time for this. I’m not here to reminisce in a stranger’s living room.</em>
</p><p>“But not today,” she says, guessing, “I won’t be speaking with her today.” The rain is trailing off, soon it will stop entirely. Isaiah shakes his head.</p><p>“No, not today.” The orange cat has begun to wind around Isaiah’s ankles, meowing plaintively. “She’s got a job out on Radio Row, won’t be home till late.” </p><p>Gloria finished her water and stood up. </p><p>“I see. I will come back later then.”</p><p>Isaiah reaches for the empty glass and nods. The cat is now yowling in earnest. He shushes it out of the corner of his mouth, which the cat seems to take as a positive sign. </p><p>“I don’t suppose you know when I can expect to see her, then?” Gloria can’t help the edge in her voice as she makes her way towards the door- the arched eyebrow she directs at Isaiah is a conscious choice.</p><p>Rather than shrinking beneath her gaze, Isaiah opens the apartment door, and juts his chin out.</p><p>“You’ll see her when you see her,” he says firmly. “Ma’am.”</p><p>Gloria smiles tightly. She thinks about the clench of Arthur’s jaw, the way the light refracted off of Aron’s glasses, how Luis would move to place himself between her and the street when they walked together in the rain. She thinks about hearing Paul speak, that first time, and how it set something inside of her alight. She thinks about Filomena's hands on her in the dark. </p><p>“I suppose that will have to do. Good afternoon, Isaiah.”</p><p>He closes the door gently behind her, and as she begins to descend the stairs to the apartment building door, Gloria hears him chiding the cat. Later, Isaiah will realize that he never got the woman's name.</p><p>
  <em> I have waited a long time - I can wait a bit longer. But not too long. </em>
</p><p>She steps out into the rain-scented afternoon, and walks away.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>So, I cried A Lot reading Before the Devil Breaks You and The King of Crows, and Gloria just wormed her way into my heart, and here we are.</p><p>The legend/folk-tale about the Devil beating his wife is native to Haiti and I imagined would have been something Isaiah's heard growing up from his mother. I really should have checked this earlier, because I initially subbed in something my mom (who is Costa Rican) used to say about the Virgin Mary doing her laundry, shame on me.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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